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Topic: My new Shimpaku (Read 21969 times)

This one has changed through a few hands recently and when I had the opportunity, it quickly followed me home. It was quite over-grown, but seemed very healthy. I'd intended to repot it this spring, but that window lapsed and so it will continue in this pot & soil for another year.

I noticed this spring that there were lots of inner branches that were starting to weaken/yellow, so this weekend I decided I'd open it up a bit. This was simply to let more light in and hopefully strengthen some interior growth so I can compact this tree a good bit over the next few years.

I've got a couple of ideas as to the way forward with this one, but nothing that'd constitute a plan. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about it.

Only one way to find out. Make sure to use some sort of buffer material between the bark and the jack, something like a thick rubber, but I think the pressure on the trunk will be immense, so you may need a couple different materials to distribute the load. I'm not sure exactly because I have not done any trunk splitting to do extreme bends on thick material, but this might be a good candidate if you do some investigation to see if others have done it with success.

Is there any danger in getting too large a jack? I've found 14.5", 15.5" and 23.5" jacks. The price increase isn't exactly linear, so I'm considering the largest one, though I'm unlikely to need that length in the short-term. Will it be prohibitively large when working with smaller trees?